WP Social Avatar

by Maruti Mohanty ·
Published September 16, 2014
· Updated July 3, 2015

WP Social Avatar

This plugin does exactly what the name says, which is WP social avatar, it allows the user to use his/her social networks profile pictures like Facebook and Google plus profile pictures as the WordPress avatar.

The idea of this plugin came into my mind after repeatedly getting bore of the engravatar picture which is used by wordpress by default. I started looking for a simple plugin and to my surprise it wasn’t there, so as a result of which I worked and completed WP Social Avatar

Why should one use this plugin?

Like me, if you who believes in a saying “Variety is the spice of life”, and you are a person who gets bore on using the same gravatar for more than few days or few weeks at most in his/her WordPress site, then this plugin is totally for you.
This plugin provides an easy and simple solution for all the boredom, it allows the user to use Social media like Facebook and Google plus profile pictures as their gravatar instead of the one from default gravatar.com.

Simple WP Social Avatar Settings:

After activating the plugin, the admin will see WP Avatar, under Users menu. Here the admin has the option to set the minimum role or capabilities for the users required to enjoy this feature.

Then the allowed users will now see the available options in their Your Profile sub menu under Users menu.

For the first version I have only added two of the most famous and widely used social medias, Facebook and Google plus. For getting the respective profile picture, you need to either add your Facebook user id ( Find your Facebook ID ) or your Google plus id or handle in the corresponding fields.

Once you are done with the above, check the social profile picture option you want to use as the gravatar, use the one where you are mostly active and keeps updating the profile picture and click Update Profile and thats it, you are done.

After saving the profile you can see your respective social media profile picture in place of the boring default gravatar. With this you have added that necessary spice to your much needed boring WordPress avatar. After this, every time the profile picture of the respective social media changes the WordPress avatar also changes.

With Version 1.4 I have implemented the cache functionality with the plugin for the Google Plus avatar, now this optimizes the functionality. With this functionality added the Google plus profile picture link is cached in the wp options table and hence adds to the swiftness. I have also added a clear cache button for Google plus profile picture, which when clicked clears any previous cache containing the previous Google plus profile link and gets the latest image from the user’s account. The plugin by default clears the cache every 48 hours.

With Version 1.4.1 I have introduced the “wp_social_avatar_heading” filter, using this filter you can change the default heading which says “WP Avatar Options”

You can use the filter in the following way in your child theme‘s functions.php file

PHP

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functionse_function(){

return'Test Heading';

}

add_filter('wp_social_avatar_heading','se_function');

With this the heading would change to “Test Heading”

Do let me know your views about the plugin, any improvement or customization requests are also welcome.

8 Responses

Hey friend i have a question.
I want to use your plug-in on my website.
The user scan set up projects on my website.
I want to show profile picture instead of gravatar.
Its not working can you help me out?

PS: Presently the FB profile picture functionality is not working due to Facebook’s recent change in API, so kindly use the Google plus profile for the time being or keep both the option unchecked to use the default garavatar.

Just installed the plugin and have it using my Facebook profile picture.
Hacked the code a bit and now it shows my name when I hover over it.
Thanks for the useful plugin. Saved me from registering for a Gravatar.